Sign Up for Our Cancer Care and Prevention Newsletter

Thanks for signing up!

Cervical cancer is a serious but potentially curable cancer. The standard treatment for early-stage cervical cancer includes radical hysterectomy (removal of the uterus, the cervix, and some surrounding tissue), sometimes followed by radiation plus chemotherapy (depending on how advanced the cancer turns out to be at the time of surgery). Sometimes radiation and chemotherapy are done without any surgery, if the cancer is too advanced at the time of diagnosis for surgery to be considered helpful.

Often, thanks to Pap smear screening, cervical cancer is found when it's still in its early stages — in other words, the cancer doesn't appear to have spread beyond the cervix, and the area of the cervix affected by the cancer appears to be small.

If cervical cancer is found in this early stage and the patient strongly wishes to preserve her fertility, a special type of surgery, known as radical trachelectomy, may be considered. When a radical trachelectomy is done, only the cervix and the nearby lymph nodes are removed, leaving behind the ovaries and the uterus. This surgery allows normal hormone production from the ovaries to continue, and the uterus remains in place to carry a pregnancy. To keep the uterus closed during a future pregnancy (which would normally be the job of the cervix), the bottom of the uterus is sewn closed (a procedure called cerclage) at the time of the trachelectomy. Radical trachelectomy should be done by surgeons who are highly experienced with this surgery, and women considering the procedure should be aware that surgical complications are more common with radical trachelectomy than with standard radical hysterectomy. Also, the risk of preterm delivery and second trimester pregnancy loss is higher among women who are carrying a pregnancy after trachelectomy and cerclage than among women who are carrying a pregnancy with a normal cervix.

Talk to your doctor about whether radical trachelectomy is an option, given your specific type and stage of cervical cancer. It makes sense to seek the opinion of an experienced gynecologic oncologist to thoroughly discuss radical trachelectomy versus standard cervical cancer surgery.

This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.

Advertising Notice

This Site and third parties who place advertisements on this Site may collect and use information about
your visits to this Site and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of
interest to you. If you would like to obtain more information about these advertising practices and to make
choices about online behavioral advertising, please click here.